The following subjects deserve to be treated in a more
extensive manner than the nature of this work will permit.
Fain would I glide down a gentle river, but I am carried
away by a torrent.

Commerce is a cure for the most destructive prejudices;
for it is almost a general rule, that wherever we find agreeable
manners, there commerce flourishes; and that wherever
there is commerce, there we meet with agreeable
manners.

Let us not be astonished, then, if our manners are now
less savage than formerly. Commerce has everywhere diffused
a knowledge of the manners of all nations: these are
compared one with another, and from this comparison
arise the greatest advantages.

Commercial laws, it may be said, improve manners for
the same reason that they destroy them. They corrupt the
purest morals. This was the subject of Plato's complaints;
and we every day see that they polish and refine the most
barbarous.

2.--Of the Spirit of Commerce

Peace is the natural effect of trade. Two nations who
traffic with each other become reciprocally dependent; for
if one has an interest in buying, the other has an interest
in selling; and thus their union is founded on their mutual
necessities.

But if the spirit of commerce unites nations, it does not
in the same manner unite individuals. We see that in countries
[Holland] where the people move only by the spirit
of commerce, they make a traffic of all the humane, all the
moral virtues; the most trifling things, those which humanity
would demand, are there done, or there given,
only for money.

The spirit of trade produces in the mind of a man a
certain sense of exact justice, opposite, on the one hand,
to robbery, and on the other to those moral virtues which
forbid our always adhering rigidly to the rules of private
interest, and suffer us to neglect this for the advantage of
others.

The total privation of trade, on the contrary, produces
robbery, which Aristotle ranks in the number of means of
acquiring; yet it is not at all inconsistent with certain moral
virtues. Hospitality, for instance, is most rare in trading
countries, while it is found in the most admirable perfection
among nations of vagabonds.

It is a sacrilege, says Tacitus, for a German to shut his
door against any man whomsoever, whether known or unknown.
He who has behaved with hospitality to a stranger
goes to show him another house where this hospitality is
also practised; and he is there received with the same humanity. [Volume 1, Page 100]
But when the Germans had founded kingdoms,
hospitality had become burdensome. This appears by two
laws of the code of the Burgundians; one of which inflicted
a penalty on every barbarian who presumed to
show a stranger the house of a Roman; and the other decreed,
that whoever received a stranger should be indemnified
by the inhabitants, every one being obliged to pay
his proper proportion.

3.--Of the Poverty of the People

There are two sorts of poor; those who are rendered
such by the severity of government: these are, indeed, incapable
of performing almost any great action, because
their indigence is a consequence of their slavery. Others
are poor, only because they either despise or know not the
conveniences of life; and these are capable of accomplishing
great things, because their poverty constitutes a part
of their liberty.

4.--Of Commerce in different Governments

Trade has some relation to forms of government. In a
monarchy, it is generally founded on luxury; and though
it be also founded on real wants, yet the principal view
with which it is carried on is to procure everything that
can contribute to the pride, the pleasure, and the capricious
whims of the nation. In republics, it is commonly
founded on economy. Their merchants, having an eye to
all the nations of the earth, bring from one what is wanted
by another. It is thus that the republics of Tyre, Carthage,
Athens, Marseilles, Florence, Venice, and Holland engaged
in commerce.

This kind of traffic has a natural relation to a republican
government: to monarchies it is only occasional. For as it
is founded on the practice of gaining little, and even less
than other nations, and of remedying this by gaining incessantly,
it can hardly be carried on by a people swallowed
up in luxury, who spend much, and see nothing but
objects of grandeur.

Cicero was of this opinion, when he so justly said, "that
he did not like that the same people should be at once
both the lords and factors of the whole earth." For this
would, indeed, be to suppose that every individual in the
state, and the whole state collectively, had their heads constantly
filled with grand views, and at the same time with
small ones; which is a contradiction.

Not but that the most noble enterprises are completed
also in those states which subsist by economical commerce:
they have even an intrepidity not to be found in monarchies.
And the reason is this:

One branch of commerce leads to another, the small to
the moderate, the moderate to the great; thus he who has
gratified his desire of gaining a little raises himself to a
situation in which he is not less desirous of gaining a great
deal.

Besides, the grand enterprises of merchants are always
necessarily connected with the affairs of the public. But, in
monarchies, these public affairs give as much distrust to
the merchants as in free states they appear to give safety.
Great enterprises, therefore, in commerce are not for monarchical,
but for republican, governments.

In short, an opinion of greater certainty, as to the possession
of property in these states, makes them undertake
everything. They flatter themselves with the hopes of receiving
great advantages from the smiles of fortune; and
thinking themselves sure of what they have already acquired,
they boldly expose it in order to acquire more;
risking nothing, but as the means of obtaining.

I do not pretend to say that any monarchy is entirely
excluded from an economical commerce; but of its own
nature it has less tendency towards it: neither do I mean
that the republics with which we are acquainted are absolutely
deprived of the commerce of luxury; but it is less
connected with their constitution.

With regard to a despotic state, there is no occasion to
mention it. A general rule: A nation in slavery labors more
to preserve than to acquire; a free nation, more to acquire
than to preserve.

5.--Of Nations that have entered into an economical Commerce

Marseilles, a necessary retreat in the midst of a tempestuous
sea; Marseilles, a harbor which all the winds, the
shelves of the sea, the disposition of the coasts, point out
for a landing-place, became frequented by mariners; while
the sterility of the adjacent country determined the citizens
to an economical commerce. It was necessary that they
should be laborious to supply what nature had refused;
that they should be just, in order to live among barbarous
nations, from whom they were to derive their prosperity;
that they should be moderate, to the end that they might
always taste the sweets of a tranquil government; in fine,
that they should be frugal in their manners, to enable
them to subsist by trade--a trade the more certain as it was
less advantageous.

We everywhere see violence and oppression give birth
to a commerce founded on economy, while men are constrained
to take refuge in marshes, in isles, in the shallows
of the sea, and even on rocks themselves. Thus it was that
Tyre, Venice, and the cities of Holland were founded. Fugitives
found there a place of safety. It was necessary that
they should subsist; they drew, therefore, their subsistence
from all parts of the world.

6.--Some Effects of an extensive Navigation

It sometimes happens that a nation, when engaged in an
economical commerce, having need of the merchandise of
one country, which serves as a capital or stock for procuring
the commodities of another, is satisfied with making
very little profit, and frequently none at all, in trading with
the former, in expectation of gaining greatly by the latter.
Thus, when the Dutch were almost the only nation that
carried on the trade from the south to the north of Europe,
the French wines which they imported to the north
were in some measure only a capital or stock for conducting
their commerce in that part of the world.

It is a known fact that there are some kinds of merchandise [Volume 1, Page 101]
in Holland which, though imported from afar, sell for
very little more than they cost upon the spot. They account
for it thus: a captain who has occasion to ballast his
ship will load it with marble; if he wants wood for stowage,
he will buy it; and, provided he loses nothing by the bargain,
he will think himself a gainer. Thus it is that Holland
has its quarries and its forests.

Further, it may happen so that not only a commerce
which brings in nothing shall be useful, but even a losing
trade shall be beneficial. I have heard it affirmed in Holland
that the whale fishery in general does not answer the
expense; but it must be observed that the persons employed
in building the ships, as also those who furnish the
rigging and provisions, are jointly concerned in the fishery.
Should they happen to lose in the voyage, they have
had a profit in fitting out the vessel. This commerce, in
short, is a kind of lottery, and every one is allured with the
hopes of a prize. Mankind are generally fond of gaming;
and even the most prudent have no aversion to it, when
the disagreeable circumstances attending it, such as dissipation,
anxiety, passion, loss of time, and even of life and
fortune, are concealed from their view.

7.--The Spirit of England with respect to Commerce

The tariff or customs of England are very unsettled with
respect to other nations; they are changed, in some measure,
with every parliament, either by taking off particular
duties, or by imposing new ones. They endeavor by these
means still to preserve their independence. Supremely
jealous with respect to trade, they bind themselves but little
by treaties, and depend only on their own laws.

Other nations have made the interests of commerce
yield to those of politics; the English, on the contrary, have
ever made their political interests give way to those of
commerce.

They know better than any other people upon earth
how to value, at the same time, these three great advantages--religion,
commerce, and liberty.

8.--In what Manner economical Commerce has been sometimes restrained

In several kingdoms laws have been made extremely
proper to humble the states that have entered into economical
commerce. They have forbidden their importing
any merchandise, except the product of their respective
countries; and have permitted them to traffic only in vessels
built in the kingdom to which they brought their commodities.

It is necessary that the kingdom which imposes these
laws should itself be able easily to engage in commerce;
otherwise it will, at least, be an equal sufferer. It is much
more advantageous to trade with a commercial nation,
whose profits are moderate, and who are rendered in
some sort dependent by the affairs of commerce; with a
nation whose larger views and whose extended trade enable
them to dispose of their superfluous merchandise;
with a wealthy nation, who can take off many of their commodities,
and make them a quicker return in specie; with
a nation under a kind of necessity to be faithful, pacific
from principle, and that seeks to gain, and not to conquer:
it is much better, I say, to trade with such a nation than
with others, their constant rivals, who will never grant such
great advantages.